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Blog #3: Taking A Stand Through The Arts

The conflict between Palestine and Iran is known throughout the globe. However, I had minimal knowledge or background of what is truly going on between the two countries. Watching the movie “Slingshot Hip Hop” opened my eyes to the state of Palestine and it led to me yearning to learn more about the current condition of Palestine.

The documentary film I viewed gave me a new perspective on the pressing issue. The people of Palestine are restricted from movement, education, and freedom. They’re even being discriminated against by calling them terrorists or suicide bombers due to their looks and the Language that they speak. The basic rights we have in our normal everyday lives are being taken away from the Palestinians as if they aren’t human beings just like ourselves. I find this very discouraging as people are discriminating against each other and stereotyping certain races and ethnicities. 

Despite the saddening and disheartening truths I realized in the film, I saw how the Palestinian people continued to fight back against their oppressors for their freedom. I admire the bravery of the people to go against armed trained soldiers with only stones and rocks which shows that they’re ready to risk their lives just to keep fighting for their freedom and the freedom of their country. I also express admiration for the Palestinians who thought of a different way to fight for their freedom, education through hip hop. They took something they enjoyed and they made it more meaningful not only to themselves but to their fellow Palestinians. They made songs and raps not only for leisure, but to inspire and educate their people.  Watching the film was really enlightening as I learned more about the situations in Palestine and how much it differs from the life a human being deserves. 

In making the zine, I had zero ideas on what to do. I’m not that much of a creative person, but some certain scenes in the film really stuck onto me so I decided to put them in my zine by drawing the scenes that piqued my interest and attention. There were three main scenes that until now I remember: the reason why they made the group DAM, the walls being built around Palestine, and the state of the school library. After finishing the zine, I showed it to my friend from NU Nazareth that I’ll call Franz. At first he didn’t understand so I explained each page of it. 

First is the ‘parts’ of DAM which is 30% hip hop, 30% literature, and 40% Palestine. I loved this short breakdown of their group because of their patriotism. Like I mentioned before, they turned a hobby of theirs that they enjoyed and turned it into something more. A medium of inspiration to their fellow Palistinians who are also going through the same scenario as them. The next part that really stuck with me were the walls of Palestine. Unlike America who planned to build a wall to keep out mexicans. The Israeli soldiers built walls to keep the Palestinians inside trapped, effectively trying to imprison a country. A line from that scene that I can still remember was “I feel small next to these walls, not because of its size but because of the power that made the walls.” Even if they manage to break down the walls, they can always be rebuilt as long as they are still being oppressed by the Iranians. They know that in order to regain freedom they have to solve the source of the problem first. Lastly was how the military used the library of a school claiming that there was “no space” in other areas. Which really shows that they try to keep Palestine from its rightful freedom by sabotaging their future which is education. Education is the weapon each individual has the right to own. It is the way for an individual, community, and a country to develop into something greater. 

As a student who is given the opportunity to forge my weapon, I’ll need to sharpen and strengthen all areas of my blade so it will not crack or break under pressure. Knowing my strengths which are mathematics and weaknesses in English and literature. I will maintain the sharpness of one side and continue to work on sharpening the other. It is one thing to be creative or critical while it is something else to be creative while still delivering critical details especially in response to social issues. Creating a zine helped me think of ways in being creative, while still delivering my main critical point. Overall, I gained more information and realized the importance of knowing issues not only in the country but other countries as well. 

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BLOG #2: Reflecting on Collaborative Projects

God sees the truth but waits, a story about a man who was framed and imprisoned for a murder he did not commit. While reading the story, I was hoping that Aksionov, the main character, would have a happy ending and that the true culprit would be brought to justice. However, Aksionov spent his life in prison and the actual perpetrator was caught and sentenced years too late. 

I pondered about the ending of the story and asked myself, why did God not help him sooner? After failing to reach a conclusion I realized that God has plans for everyone and sometimes we may or may not understand the reasons, but we should maintain our faith in God and keep moving forward. I shared my insights with my friends and groupmates and they agreed to my perspective of the story.  

For the group project, we divided our members into three committees. Among the choices of Blurb writing, Filmmaking, and Cover making, I chose Blurb writing to further improve my skills in writing and I had little experience in designing and editing. 

While doing my part in the project I learned more about the thought process of writing a Blurb. The summary of the story while not revealing too much, a short overview of the setting and ways to pique the interest and curiosity of the reader. All of these elements are carefully put together to form the blurbs we see in books. Learning about these made me even more interested in the process of writing blurbs. After successfully writing a blurb I asked my friends, family, and fellow group members to evaluate and give feedback on my output. I then used the feedback to try and further improve my output until I was personally satisfied with my work. 

I feel like the contributions to the blurb were not that balanced as I did the majority of it while only one other member contributed to our output. Overall, I think the blurb was good however there are still more improvements that need to be made. The book cover was stunning to my eyes and I thought it was a good representation of the theme of the story. The trailer could have been better given we had more time for the videos. 

In summary, I believe that we did a good job as a group. We did our best to complete our respective tasks within the given time frame while managing our responsibilities with other subjects. We each showcased our talents and skills and further enhanced these while doing this activity. Given a chance to redo our work, I believe that we can improve our work to a better caliber than what it was before. 

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Climate change is the significant variation of average weather conditions becoming over several decades or longer or long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. These shifts may be natural since forest fires and volcanic eruptions happen naturally and these cause carbon emissions but not as severe as the 1800’s. Human activity has been the main reason for climate change to occur more quickly because of the Industrial revolution where machines, which mainly use fossil fuels to function, emit a large amount of carbon which contributes a lot to the current climate crisis. 

To accommodate the increasing population of the world we have to go through urbanization and before we can build more structures and buildings we have to clear land which leads to Deforestation. Deforestation brings many negative effects but among them are the inhabitants of the forest will have to look for a new habitat and species that haven’t been discovered or thoroughly researched yet can come in contact with humans which can lead to diseases that may spread to other people which slowly become a pandemic just like Covid-19. 

During the covid-19 outbreak people were forced to stay indoors to prevent the disease from spreading and since only few people can go outside, most businesses were forced to close because of this. Another effect of Pandemics is that students such as myself need to adapt to a distant learning environment in the meantime to avoid getting a disease and to keep learning despite the current situation. 

Of course not every student can adapt so easily to a new learning environment especially since we go from learning in a room with other students to a solitary room filled with distractions and because of this some students gain anxiety and can lead to problems concerning our mental health or an Education crisis.